Vanunu under house arrest

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Former Israeli nuclear technician Mordechai Vanunu has been
placed under house arrest after being detained on suspicion of
giving secret information to foreigners, a judicial source said
today.

Vanunu had been freed from an Israeli prison in April after
serving an 18-year sentence for revealing the country's nuclear
ambitions.

He was taken into custody at an east Jerusalem guest house
yesterday, where police seized documents found in his room.

The judicial source said he was released from custody later in
the evening and placed under house arrest for seven days at his
east Jerusalem home.

He has been banned from talking to the media and from announcing
the exact nature of the charges against him.

Police confiscated documents from his room and information from
computers.

Vanunu is suspected of having communicated "secret information
to foreigners" and of having violated the restrictions imposed on
him by Israeli security services after his release from prison,
police said today.,

Since his release from prison on April 21, Vanunu has been
subject to a series of sweeping restrictions, including a ban on
travelling abroad as well as holding unauthorised meetings with
foreigners.

He was also banned from leaving Israel for at least a year.

Vanunu was abducted by Israeli secret service agents in Italy,
smuggled back to Israel and then jailed in 1986 after leaking
top-secret details about the Dimona nuclear plant in the southern
Negev desert to Britain's Sunday Times.

In July this year, Israel's supreme court rejected an appeal
filed by Vanunu against the restrictions imposed on him, saying
they were unfairly severe and prevented him from leading a normal
life.

The judges ruled that he remained "a real threat" to national
security after they had submissions from the security services.

Although banned from speaking to foreign journalists without
prior authorisation from the Israeli authorities, Vanunu has given
interviews since his release in which he has denounced Israel's
nuclear program.

In April, he was quoted in the London-based Al-Hayat newspaper
as saying that the 40-year-old Dimona plant could constitute a
"second Chernobyl" following a possible accident.

But he insists that he has no more secrets to reveal.

Vanunu has said that he wants to leave Israel, where he is
widely reviled as a traitor after not only lifting the lid on the
country's nuclear ambitions but also converting to
Christianity.

"I don't like Israel. I don't want to live in Israel. I want to
be free and to leave Israel," he said in July.

Israel has never admitted to having nuclear weapons, but is
believed to possess an arsenal of about 200 warheads.